Immanuel Wallerstein and the Problem of the World (review)

Abstract

Palumbo-Liu,David, Bruce Robbins, and Nirvana Tanoukhi, eds. 2011. Immanuel Wallerstein and Problem of World. Durham NC: Duke University Press. $84.95 hc. $23.95 sc. 272 pp.Sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein is well known in social science circles for his theory of modern world-system interdependent network of core, semi-periphery, and periphery states. This edited collection, which emerged from a conference at Stanford's Program in Modern Thought and Literature, considers what humanities, so much concerned with particular, local, and subjective, can learn from Wallerstein's systematic vision. As introduction argues, many disciplines have already begun to transform their methodologies under pressure of globalization, a process which has led, in literary studies, to highly contested (re)emergence of world literature. Participants in discussion about appropriate methodologies for understanding relationship between macro and micro, systemic and particular, are typically loath to practice kind of worlding that Gayatri Spivak associates with a (neo)imperial impulse to assimilate world into Western rubrics of civilization and development. Contributors challenge existing models of world-scale thinking put forward by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Wai Chee Dimock, and Wallerstein himself on this issue and others. Engaging with Wallerstein's work thus presents occasion for scholars from a variety of disciplinary positions to explore current models of global within terms of their respective fields.The collection is organized into four sections. In first, System and Responsibility, sociologist Richard E. Lee situates world systems theory within its historical context, claiming that its emergence during tumultuous decade of 1970s makes it particularly useful for understanding our contemporary moment of crisis. Speaking to scholars in humanities, Lee represents of knowledge essential part of modern world-system in Wallerstein's tripartite schema (alongside political and economic). He points to the new liberalism one such structure of knowledge, which has exhausted its ability to contain growing political and economic turmoil of world capitalist system. For Lee, outcome of this crisis is uncertain, but he sees some promising signs for interdisciplinary scholarship in collapse of established structures of knowledge, which is closing gap between humanities and historical social sciences (37). Wrapping up first section, Bruce Robbins challenges conventional critique that world-systems theory misreads culture as merely a passive reflection of economic relations (48), cautioning against tendency in humanities to overemphasize agency at expense of larger forces that constrain individual action. Rather than a choice between system or agent, he calls upon scholars to approach this dilemma an open question: how far have people actually been able to make their own history in this case or that, under these circumstances or those? According to Robbins, such approach will help us understand what can and can't be done about global injustice and thus how our interpretive puzzles do or don't contribute to that goal (50).Moving beyond challenge that world-system theory's marginalization of culture poses to humanities a whole, second section, Literature: Restructured, Rehistoricized, Rescaled, assesses particular costs and benefits of systemic global analysis for literary studies a discipline. Franco Moretti identifies world systems theory a critical tool for describing production and circulation of literature within ever more homogenized global literary market after eighteenth century; but he contends that evolutionary theory presents a more accurate picture of disparate forms produced prior to this period within relatively isolated cultures. …